RDF - Food Systems and Circular Economy Working Group

My suggestion is a combination of many of the suggestions here.

I suggest SD begins with a cross-sector capital incentive program that recognizes restaurants, tourism and food businesses that add/send a 1% fee for local soil carbon sequestration projects. Other regions are beginning similar programs (Boulder, CO, Petaluma, etc. under the name "Cool Boulder" Cool Petaluma, etc.)

If 5% of SD restaurants participate and send 1%, that would generate $4M per year for decarbonization at no cost to the county. In fact it would be negative cost since the funds could pay for compost on behalf of the jurisdiction. Zero Foodprint is a SB1383 Direct Service Provider for San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, etc.

We already work closely with SD RCD and SDFSA and Foodshed Inc. etc. We are universally endorsed by multiple state agencies and regional governments and dozens of businesses. We'd be glad to be the on-ramp for such a program. Local stakeholders or government could take it over at any time.

I will email more details, but I suggest you schedule a meeting to merge many of the suggestions and have an actual "ready to go" solution that is a win-win-win for all parties involved.

This can be achieved by creating a sustainable funding stream to incentivize the adoption of regenerative, climate-smart farming practices for local farms that source to San Diegans. For those farms with ongoing regenerative practices, incentivize the volume of produce moved into the local marketplace that was grown using verified climate-smart production practices.

The general proposed approach to reducing GHG emissinos associated with the Food Systems and Circular Economy are a reasonable start.

What is missing is a clear set of priorities for action based on:
1. The actual (estimated) contribution of GHGs from each subcomponent of those sectors (food systems and the associate circular economic factors).
2. Assessment of which subcomponents are legally and pragmatically amenable to County/local jurisdictional authorities to control.
3. Preliminary set of prioritized actions to address the findings in #1 and 2 above.

It is essential that the public be provided the most important information about where and how much each supcomponent contributes so that we can begin to understand our potential to participate in one or more actions - as well as which to support generally.

It would be difficult to contol the larger (national/statewide) food production and distribution systems; national packaging (for health/safety) standards; and so forth. Be clear if/which aspects of those the County/cities can affect at the regional scale.

Several regional/local aspects of the food systems/circular economy that may be productive include establishing a network of neighborhood-based recycling/composting options (for community gardens, local composting, etc.); improved integration between food/grocery stores and donation centers/post-dated food distribution recipients and local relaxation (when possible) of constraints on edible (fresh) food distribution.

A good overview of such efforts - although it is from Germany: link-.

There needs to be more locally-based research on the net benefits from modifying agricultural practices to create "carbon farming" as this region's agricultural acreage and product types seem unlikely to yield substantial benefits. If the RDF is going to recommend providing incentives to modify agricultural practices and/or crops-products, those recommendations should be based on real data.